Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships

When two well-known public figures are friends for half a century, it’s gratifying and worthy of celebration. Neither competitive nor one-upping, Nina Totenberg, the NPR legal affairs correspondent, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Justice on the US Supreme Court, were drawn together as friends by their careers and perhaps more deeply by their liberal political outlook, social compatibility, and shared religious faith. Totenberg’s memoir, Dinners with Ruth, is filled with warmth and humor and shows how a succession of far-reaching controversies and cases played out in media over decades, which could have caused discordance between them instead of fostering affection and respect.

While captivating, the pages never betrayed professional confidence in each other. Between them, they covered America’s most newsworthy political events within and outside the Supreme Court. though these are almost sidelined to describe times together, enjoying pleasurable dinners with small groups of close friends, and even occasional shopping jaunts together.

Both women, standing firmly on their singular pedestals, experienced long, satisfying marriages, coping with demanding ‘day jobs’ but never failing to provide solace and care for husbands who endured lengthy, painful illnesses. Their lives are admirable, and the book is unexpectedly humbling.